The Center will create a supportive and productive environment in which self-help leaders, multidisciplinary researchers and representatives of the public mental health system can collaborate on self-help research and knowledge dissemination projects with a special focus on persons with serious mental illness. It will plan and conduct four programs of research. They will generate knowledge about (a) how self-help-ad pro- fessional services can be coordinated for people with serious mental illness; (b) how self-help groups can develop more effective programs, (c) how persons with serious mental illness can be enabled to make beneficial use of socially integrating, general purpose self-help groups and (d) how the public mental health system can engage in effective interorganizational relations with self-help programs. In each of these four areas, a program of research will be initiated by a specific study. The Center will create interlocking positions with research and dissemination programs within units of the University of Michigan (Psychiatry, Public Health, Institute for Social Research, Social Work), the Michigan Department of Mental Health and nationally oriented self-help organizations. It will disseminate knowledge about self-help services to self-help groups, the public mental health system, to self-help clearinghouses and centers and to university education programs in the health and human services. It will plan, pilot and seek external support for a variety of research and dissemination projects related to self-help mental health services. The Center will highlight the minority perspectives and concerns inherent in each of the above activities.